Paying for Web Designs – How Much Should You Pay for Design Work?

E-Commerce and other Web Development these days can be quick and easy, for the people with the right skill. An open source shopping cart can be downloaded and installed in about 30minutes, the same works for most content management systems also. A domain name and hosting can be setup in about the same time.

Then if you change the theme a little, replace the logos, and maybe the color of some text, borders, backgrounds etc. you can really make the shopping cart your own.

All in just a few hours, now I have my own little web design company. And we do things in about 2x this time. With all the checks and other internal business processes we go through.

I might also add, we have university graduates, qualified and with a minim of 5 years commercial experience with portfolios to match.

A quality design should not take a long time, though some may take more time to produce something truly amazing. To the most part you can achieve high quality of work without the time excuses. If you are paying for someone to spend all day to create a logo, it sounds to me like they are really inefficient or pulling your leg.

Something I tend to think of when dealing with people who take too long is, are you paying them to learn? you see I had some issues with a car some time back, the engine seized up and I needed to replace it, I had offers as much as $4000 to replace the engine, and as little as $1000 to do the same thing. And you know what; some of the better more professional offers were also to the most part cheaper (It was BMW 730iL for those who wonder).

Now I can’t say this is the same in every industry and can only speculate as to what was really going on. But this is often a thought when I’m paying for someone’s time. Are you paying them to learn? Now you may get offers that are simply out of your price range, and hourly rates that make your jaw drop. In this case just think, can you pay someone half as much per hour to take just a little longer? If you can, that’s a clear way to bring costs back.

Once you are confident with the amount of time they are spending, you should really check out their portfolio. Once you are happy with the time/price and quality of their works. That should be just about all you need to worry about. Though one thing that may be worth noting is designers are like artists, when you get to know a designer and there work. You can pick their creations from others just the same as you would an artist. In saying this it is also good to keep this in mind when giving a designer your creative ideas, most good designers will come up with better designs when left to their own devices.

In summary, find a designer that does not take a long time to produce something. Check the quality of their previous works. And hire away, for simple graphic work direct from a designer should cost no more than $100 USD for a design does not matter where you are from. You might pay more to have designs turned into a webpage, though this part is can usually be done by a basic web-developer without much design experience. Most graphic designers can have this done also.